


lookalike

by chanterai



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, Idiot teen boys who have never kissed anyone learning how to kiss, M/M, Post-Re:Mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22438120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanterai/pseuds/chanterai
Summary: Ventus has never in his life considered himself a narcissist.
Relationships: Roxas/Ventus (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 79





	lookalike

**Author's Note:**

> a ko-fi commission for my dearest kom!!!!!!!!!! thank you for enabling my venroku obsessed ass
> 
> please excuse the Chunkiness of this, also, brain machine ain't giving me much editing power these days. enjoy!!

Ventus has never in his life considered himself a narcissist. 

He doesn’t at all mind the way he looks, that’s not it. He’s objectively probably pretty good looking. Good skin, cool hair. He’s fit and his sense of style is very, very rad, thank you very much. 

But, well. The added factor of another person actually wearing his face is maybe not something he’d ever thought he’d have to consider.

So the _thing_ is that Roxas is like, extremely cool. He’s incredibly sweet while also being abnormally strong, fast, and stunningly skilled in battle. 

_Pretty good,_ Ven had said. Pretty good. What kind of a half-assed compliment was that? He sounds like _Vanitas,_ and that’s maybe not a great place to start with the whole… flirting thing. 

And that’s… well, that’s what he’s trying to do. _Flirt._

So far Roxas has been… amenable to it. Amenable? Maybe that’s not the word. He’s oblivious to most things, is the problem, so Ven isn’t quite sure how to read any amount of touching. Any of their shared looks that with anyone else would come off as overtly flirtatious but with Roxas seem very much casual. 

He’s just like this with everyone. Sweet. Smiley. A little more touchy than is maybe appropriate, at least with most people. The only person he doesn’t seem to be like that with is Riku, but from what Ven understands, they have _history._ And not, like, good history.

Anyway. The whole _amenable_ thing. 

Roxas is weirdly easy about going places together. Climbing the clock tower in Twilight Town that Ven knows he also has history with, and so should maybe be a more private, intimate place. He’d asked once why it’s not that, why it’s not a secret for just him and a few people, and Roxas had shrugged one shoulder.

“It’s a place for friends,” he’d said, and then stuck his ice cream in his mouth like that was explanation enough.

And Ven had been momentarily distracted by that. By the ice cream in his mouth, or more specifically by Roxas’ mouth because Ven, as much as he has been alive for twenty-six years, is still a whole teenage boy with needs and, well. Growing pains, so to speak.

But he’d taken the answer even though he’s pretty certain at this point that he’d like to be more than friends with Roxas, pretty certain that even if they were _just friends_ he’d still like to hold his hand and maybe definitely kiss him. 

Apparently that’s a thing that can be done, if Lea is someone who can be trusted. 

“Friends with benefits, kiddo,” he’d said with a patronizing pat to Ven’s painstakingly styled hair. “You can be friends and still mack on each other, y’know?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ven had mumbled back, ducking out of the way before Lea could touch him again. “I’ve got it memorized, sure.”

He’d bit the bullet a couple of days after that frankly embarrassing interaction with Lea, gone up to the clock tower with an ice cream and the intention to sulk, but found Roxas already sitting there. He’d looked a little down, so Ven had wordlessly handed over his treat and settled next to him.

Halfway through the ice cream Roxas had very quietly said, “I worry sometimes that I’ll never be my own person.”

And it had been such a _heavy_ thing to say. Between the three — _four,_ says the guilt-drenched reminder of Vanitas in the back of his brain — of them who’d lived in Sora’s heart, Ven was really the only one who’d been his own person before joining with them. Roxas and Xion were made, crafted out of something or nothing or the abstract space between.

All this time, Xion had seemed to be adapting so well, and so Ven had thought Roxas had been too.

“You are,” Ven had said lamely, because he didn’t know what else to _say._ “You are your person.” It’s what he believed, what he still believes. That Roxas is a person, an entirely separate entity even though he’d shared a heart with Sora and still shares a face with Ven.

Roxas had quietly finished his ice cream, still looking… off. Down. And then he’d sniffed, and smiled this tiny, private smile, and held out the stick.

“It’s a winner,” he’d said, and Ven had kissed him. 

He still doesn’t know what drove him to the absolute insanity of leaning forward, hand curled into a fist against the concrete ledge of the clock tower. What had possessed him to bring their mouths together. 

But _boy_ is he glad he had. 

It’d been awful, if he’s being honest, totally clumsy and sloppy and Roxas hadn’t really even kissed back to start. Hadn’t responded at all until Ven had pulled away to stare into his wide, dumbfounded eyes.

“What, um.” Roxas had looked away and the way his lashes had fluttered against his cheeks haunts Ven to this day.

“I’m-,”

“Can we do that again?”

And Ven had fully been expecting, at that point, Roxas to tell him to screw off and leave him alone because _what_ was he _doing?_ So he’d sputtered for a moment at the dissonance between what he’d expected and the sock of what had actually happened before he’d finally nodded, voice caught in his throat, and then leaned back in to try again.

It’d quickly become a whole Thing, right; clambering up the clock tower together and making out in the perpetual gold-orange twilight. Neither of them were particularly good at it to start. No, it’d been a comedy of errors essentially from start to finish as they figured out how to do anything at all, embarrassing missteps like the time Roxas had fully put his tongue up Ven’s nose, another time when Ven had gotten much too sloppy and hadn’t noticed until Roxas had started laughing — and _oh,_ that sound, that bright, sweet laughter has just become sweeter and sweeter — that he’d drooled all down his chin and stained the front of his shirt.

But it gets better. It gets much, much better.

They’ve both gotten quite good at this. At kissing without slobbering all over themselves or each other, without putting mouths or teeth or tongues where they probably shouldn't go. It goes from figuring out how to do anything to figuring out what they _like,_ which feels like a momentous victory.

They try a lot of things, some that work, some that don’t. Like, Ven hates it when Roxas kisses his ears (it tickles) and that Roxas doesn’t like the back of his neck touched at all (it makes him jumpy and tense). There’d even been one entirely misguided attempt in which Ven had put his mouth on Roxas’ knee and _sucked,_ which had ended with Roxas kicking Ven so hard in the chest he’d fallen to the floor. Which they’d laughed about after, but Ven swears privately he’d almost cracked his breastbone.

But then Ven discovers rather quickly that when he presses gentle kisses to the soft space below Roxas’ ear, where his jaw meets his neck, Roxas sighs in this incredibly sweet, affected way that makes Ven’s heart beat a little faster. He discovers that Roxas’ mouth on his shoulders, open and wet, makes him so dizzy he’s sure the whole world is going to spin apart.

And it’s all so good, is the thing. The contact that they’d both been lacking for so long has them both smiling more often than not and the best part is how easy it is to sink into it once it starts. Like a hot bath, warmth that seeps away aches that neither of them had ever thought to address.

Even better is when they start sleeping together. 

It’s entirely innocent; they don’t do much more than kiss anyway, since they’ve both decided that maybe they’re not _ready_ for more. But they share a bed now more often than not, and even though Ven doesn’t sleep much — ten years is plenty enough sleep for an entire lifetime, he thinks — it’s still an incredible comfort to nap for an hour and wake up with Roxas’ face tucked into his throat while he snores softly. 

Roxas has nightmares, or he’d had them until they started sleeping together. Now his sleeping-face is so much less _pinched,_ less distressed and tense and that too feels like a victory. Ven figures out that if he runs a hand through Roxas’ hair while he’s sleeping his whole body shudders, melts. That he’ll squirm closer if Ven rolls away at all during the night, seeking out warmth, seeking out comfort.

They both sleep much better pressed up against each other, chest-to-chest with their heartbeats in sync.

How they manage to make it for weeks and weeks without anyone actually noticing what they’ve been doing is entirely beyond Ven, though he’s thankful for it.

He’s not embarrassed or ashamed, not really shy about what they’re doing. But it’s nice to have something that’s just for them, something that just the two of them can share. Not a secret but a quiet, private thing. But of course eventually someone was always going to figure it out. 

It’s one of those afternoons when it’s more than just them up on the clock tower — Ven and Roxas, Lea and Xion and Isa — and Ven is absently thinking that he’s not sure when he was sort of absorbed into their group when Roxas, equally absently, winds their fingers together in his lap. 

Neither of them think anything of it until Lea goes, “A- _ha!_ ”

It startles Xion so badly she nearly tips off the tower and she slugs Lea in the shoulder about it, but Lea isn’t paying attention to anything that isn’t pointing with equal parts glee and accusation at Ven and Roxas’ linked hands. 

Roxas and Ven say, “Oh,” at almost the exact same time. Xion lets out an exaggerated little gasp and joins Lea in _pointing_ like they’re criminals while Isa watches and looks distantly confused.

“Finally,” Lea says triumphantly.

“ _Finally,_ ” Xion echoes.

“Finally?” Ven wonders. 

And it’s easier after that; after that first afternoon of Lea's innuendos and mostly good-natured jibing while he ruffled their hair like a proud old lady — and Ven makes a point of ducking out of the way but Roxas never does, and in fact looks a little bit sheepishly pleased about it — and Xion grinning along like she’d known the whole time. Isa doesn’t stop looking confused but he does at one point mutter, “Congratulations,” which is more embarrassing than any other conceivable reaction. 

It still feels good, is the thing. Still feels like it’s _theirs_ even with other people in on the secret. And now that other people do know, Ven finds himself taking Roxas’ hand wherever they go, holding on tight all proud and pleased.

It’s theirs, even if it's known to the rest of their friends, and somehow that feels so, so irreconcilably good.

**Author's Note:**

> if you would like to yell at/with me about venroku or probably any roxas ship or just yell in general you can find me on twit [@buffmickeymouse](http://twitter.com/buffmickeymouse)


End file.
